Rare Opportunity (and the only option we have to continue our work)

Posted on September 29, 2022September 29, 2022 by Monte Merrick

Reverend Gary Davis is right, we do have to move. It’s been 18 months since HWCC decided that we had to move our facility. Our current lease ends at the end of this year. It took us until this Summer to locate a property that we can afford and make work. By afford, I mean, that its sale price to us is a very good deal and significantly less than any other property we’ve considered. I do not mean that we have the money. We don’t.

But this property is a rare opportunity and I do believe that we will be able to secure some kind of financing – both the property and Humboldt Wildlife Care Center are good bets.

But the costs of moving is going to come from people we ask to help. There is no other way. The amount we need to raise by the end of this year in order to complete this transition – in essence a transformation – is more than any goal we’ve ever set, by far. I don’t see another path forward.

We simply need to raise this money – it’s hard for me announce this goal, so apprehensive I am, but what else is there to be done? A downpayment, the cost of getting enough infrastructure up and running at our new facility – including all the administrative tasks – so that our work continues without interruption, while we dismantle and clear the facility we currently occupy – money and volunteer labor will be the only thngs that get us through.

So here we go! If you are reading this, you may be a person we need. We may need your physical help, we made need your financial backing, we may need your expertise. We definitely need you to root hard for us.

In every wildlife project I’ve worked on before Bird Ally X merged with HWCC, there were people who worked all day on the logistics, the paperwork, the fundraising and the budgeting. I was a wildlife rehabilitator – I specialized in oil spill response, seabird wrecks, orphan-rearing, care, innovating patient housing, and training volunteers – other highly skilled people did the work to make sure I had the tools and resources needed to do all of those things. Their contribution to those efforts is so terrific – I’ve known that forever, but when I came to HWCC, it wasn’t long before I needed to learn to do that job too.

So, yes, in fact it is frightening to embark on a project this big, this critical, this necessary and with such high stakes that failure is, as they say, not an option. Especially when it’s just some punk from New Jersey who wound up on the west coast leading the way. So I thought some background was in order.

I want to tell you the origins of Bird Ally X, how our mission led us to HWCC, and tell you what I see on the other side of this transformation – I want to tell you what we are building together and show you some of the foundation of that vision.

However, if you already know you support our work and don’t need to read about BAX history from my perspective, maybe you would like to me cut to the chase, tell you that our goal is $150,000 (which is roughly the amount of one year in our budget!) and donate now.

For the rest of you who would like to know more about BAX’ beginnings and how we got here, and where we’re headed, well read on….

Bird Ally X – who we are and how we got this way

Since this website’s first incarnation at blogspot.com in 2009, the voice speaking to you from this platform has mostly been mine. Making the website was a gamble. Only Laura Corsiglia, my beloved and co-inventer of the idea of Bird Ally X knew about it – BAX was an idea whose time was about to come but hadn’t quite.

But it did come. On September 22, 2009, Bird Ally X was founded as a collective by six of us. Shannon RIggs, DVM (currently the Director of Anaimal Care at Pacific Wildlife Care in Morro Bay), Vann Masvidal (currently the Center Director also at PWC in Morro Bay) January Bill and Marie Travers (both currently leading our Botulism Response Program in the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge), and Laura (currently BAX art director as well as a logistical support for HWCC, and chief photographer and also my beloved) and me. Our first task: to develop a workshop that we could take to conferences that gave people a place to start learning how to effectively rehabilitate aquatic birds.

Athough we each had a lot of experience rehabilitating wildlife in general, oil spill response had given us each a strong specailization in aquatic bird rehabilitation, with deeper specialization among us – for example, Shannon is a gifted surgeon, Laura has a genius eye, Vann is extremely sensitive, Marie has perserverance and mad skills, January is methodical and precise and deeply committed to excellence. I don’t mean these people have common traits that you might identify among your friends, not unless your friends happen to be super heroes, which is what my five co-founders all have in common. Let’s face it, I met them in the middle of an oil spill response where we were all far from home, working 16 hour days amid hundreds of suffering wild birds, doing what we could to keep them alive and help them recover. I was amazed by them. Truly super heroes. And when we founded Bird Ally X, we thought it would be great to help other super heroes learn how to effectively rehabilitate aquatic bIrds too.

Making this workshop led to an expanded mission: to publish instructional materials for wildlife rehabilitators everywhere. Many rehabilitators work at a very small scale, usually in their own homes or in their own backyards. who are remote yet still deserve to learn the most current techniques of our field, also to help small facilities at times when they face an influx of patients that overwhelm them or are unfamiliar – most rehabilitators don’t get frequent chances to learn how to handle a sudden seabird mortality event, and need help if it happens in their area, as an example.

In the end, our mission statement included providing direct care to wild animals in need, providing educational materials and opportunities to wildlife rehabilitators and the general public, and also, and no less important, to advocate for our patients, not as stewards but as allies in the ongoing and undeniable war on nature and the wild, of which we are also a product, recognizing where our side truly is, just as Allied forces fought their war against fascist destruction.

All of this was, you could say, a tall order.

After the workshop was complete and had been delviered a few times, we wrote a book, An Introduction to Aquatic Bird Rehabilitation. You can buy it here. We’ve sold several hundred, maybe a thousand. We keep the price low. The last few printings have been done beautifully at the local and fantastic Bug Press.

The book came out of that first workshop that we put together, called by the same name. Our first version of the book was a ‘zine styled handout, about 50 pages long, and offered with our workshop. The second iteration was still a free handout, but had grown to over a hundred pages. At last in 2012, we published the book in its current form, 150 pages and available for $38USD. Now, ten years later, we are planning its first revisions.

Intro to Aquatic Bird Rehabilitatio, the first handout

In 2011, a year after receiving our 501(c)3, most of the six co-founders had been scattered by life’s circumstances (work, family, the usual) to different parts of the state and country. For example, Laura and I spent the last 6 months of 2010 in MIchigan responding to the massive spill of Alberta tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River from a ruptured Enbridge pipeline, where we provided care for hundreds of birds and thousands of aquatic turtles. (At points during that response, I was responsible for the entire wildlife response! eek! talk about sleepless nights!)

Come August of 2011, with three of us (Laura, myself and January) in Humboldt County for various reasons not related to BAX, a small disaster that had been unfolding for months, if not years, came to our attention. Juvenile Brown Pelicans were being seen at fish cleaning stations at public boat launches and docks, completely soaked and suffering because of it.

Fish waste, greasy and non-soluble, poses a significant problem for aquatic birds the world over. THe impact of fish waste on feathers is the same as the imapct of petroleum products – that is, it completely disrupts the waterproofing that a bird’s feathers provide by disrupting the arrangement of feathers and allowing water to penetrate to the body. Like most birds, an aquatic bird’s temperature runs from about 39˚to 41˚C (102-106˚F) and being waterproof is what allows them to thrive on water that may only be 10˚C (50˚F). If the water gets through to their skin it’s not unlike a diver who suddenly finds they have a hole in thier drysuit. If they don’t leave the water they will soon succumb to hypothermia. For our unfortunate human diver, simply pulling them back to the boat and giving them hot tea may suffice, but for an aquatic bird, leaving water means leaving home – where the food is , where the water is, where life is… stranded they will soon die.

Read more about fish waste and our responses in 2011 and 2012

After a couple days of reconnaisance, we found wet, struggling fish waste contaminated juvenile Brown Pelicans from Crescent CIty to Shelter Cove, a span of nearly 200 miles. We captured close to ten immediately, and over the next month in 2011 rescued and treated more than 50 individuals.

In 2012, the situation was not necessarily worse, but we learned about it sooner, in early July and began our response then. We ended up treated over 250 birds that year, mostly Pelicans, but also about a dozen gulls of different species, but mostly Heermann’s Gulls, who are closely associated with Brown Pelicans.

The 2011 response began our relationship with HWCC, at the time a very small clinic treating far less than a thousand patients each year, with one staff person and no business hours, only a hotline. We worked with HWCC to develop thier facility into a true hospital and rasied funds so that our project of caring for the impacted Pelicans did not disrupt their meager finances (our finances are STILL meager!)

Juvenile Brown Pelicans make use of our Pelican, Gull and Cormorant aviary, during the fish waste response of 2012.

Developing HWCC’s infrastructure did create another challenge. There was no one on the staff who could operate what we’d built. Pools are a complex tool to us in treating wildlife, and the inexperiences care giver is at a marked disadvantage. without a good working knowledge of a pool’s usse and maintenance, they become a danger to the patient, not a benefit. HWCC asked BAX staff to stay on as managers of their facility in the winter of 2011/12 and we did.

As I mentioned above, 2012 saw a much larger fish waste crisis with 5 times the patients of 2011. A response of this magnitude required help from out of our region. Staff from the Oiled Wildlife Care Network (OWCN), staff from the Calfornia Department of Fish and WIldlife (CDFW) and rehabilitators from around the state came to Humboldt to lend a hand.

Besides for developing our facility to handle this level of response, we had to develop our core group of volunteers. During this time we realized that we had an incredible opportunity to build not only a facility that could provide high quality care, but, given our proximity to Cal Poly Humboldt, one of the premier wildlife studies universities in the West, a hospital that could also train current and future wildlife care providers.

A teaching hospital is something you can start right away while you spend a lifetime making it better, and we did start right away. Over the last ten years our internship program has helped nearly 75 young people, mostly students at Cal Poly, advance their skills and ready them for employment in the field of wildlife care. The five current members of our staff are graduates of the program! As we move into the future, a major goal is to further exapnd the eduactional opportunites ofr our volunteers, interns and staff, and help contribute to a cultiure of excellence in our field. A sturdy and sustainable foundation will always be a crucial ingredient for success, and this is where support from the community plays a huge role, making our goals achievable.

The goal of converting Humboldt Wildlife Care Center into a teaching hospital led us to merging with HWCC in 2013, -a move that was completed in 2014. In 2014 HWCC merged with BAX. Taking complete responsibility for this facility has allowed us to use it, not only asa hospital that treats 1500 patients each year, providing second chances to innocent wild animals caught in the myriad snares of human infrastructure, but also a laboratory to develop techniques and strategies that can be used by wildlife rehabilitators anywhere who suffer from the very typical scenario of being terribly overworked while being shockingly underfunded. (Take our budget as an example, last year we took in about $150,000 and treated 1,612 patients. That amounts to $93 per patient. Now that’s not the whole story, many of those patients were very long term, like an orphaned raccoon who requires 4 months of care, compared to Fox Sparrow who hit a window and is ready for release in 24 hours – obviously patient needs can differ extremely – but still, we maintain a staff and facility on very little money – our excellence is found in resilience, innovation, sacrifice and a willingness to use what’s available to achieve the impossible!)

Still, the simple truth is that we have been able to develop much needed training materials and workshops becuaes we’ve had the opportunity to use real world development (something we might call trail and error) – this opportunity is golden, and we want to continue in this vein for as long as wildlife rehabilitation is a needed service.

A very nervous Coyote pup gets an examination.

The Pelican fish waste response also led us into a much more active role as advocates for our patients, including protecting our wild neighbors from becoming patients. In fact I was the inaugural chair of the Advocacy committee for the California Council for Wildlife Rehabilitators, a professional organization of rehabilitators in our state that hosts an annual Symposium and supports the improvement of available care.

It became quite obvious that those of us on the frontlines of the war between society and nature had an important perspective and important specific knowledge that could help policy makers make decisions and take actions that were inaccordance with the critical needs of wild animals. Some policies are easy to enact, like putting on lid on the fishwaste bins so that juvenile Pelicans can’t forage in them, while other solutions require changing hearts and minds, like banning cruel traps, stopping abominations like bear hounding and killing contests and promoting use of nonlethal measures instead of senseless slaughter to protect property from damages caused by wild animals.

Advocacy work can be problematic. Political divisions are readily apparent when you attend a public meeting. Advocating for wild animals automatically puts on one side of the aisle and on the other side are the agricultural and “hook and bullet” lobbyists, as they are often called. Well, ranchers and farmers, hunters and anglers, are real people, not lobbyists, and they help to make up our community. Ranchers, farmers hunters and anglers may encounter a wild animal in need and require our help – ranching, farming, hunting and fishing don’t automatically preclude compassion. So we must be careful not to alienate those who may need our help. It’s a line that we walk everyday if we are being true to our mission in all of its implications and ramifications. And in fact, learning to walk this line is fitting and proper – we are here to serve all of our community when they need us. Being able to persuade an angler to help us stop fish waste pollution is critical! We need more allies, not more enemies. Learning to walk this line is the right thing to do. And we have no other choice; our responsibility to our patients and the wildlife we serve demand it.

To that end, we intitiated our “humane solutions” program, in which we help people solve any conflict they might have with a wild animal in a manner that is respectful of the rights and needs of the animal, and effectively protects the property and safety of the people involved. With this program we have intervened in thousands of conflicts over the last eleven years, keeping wild families together, and preserving hundreds, if not thousands, of wild lives.

The big stories, of course, from the last 11 years, are our patients. As I write this, Wednesday, September 28th at 5pm our database says that we’ve admitted 13,544 wild animals since January 2012. That’s 13,544 wild animals in need. Suffering animals who would’ve had nowhere to turn, no-one to relieve their suffering if it weren’t for you and your support of our work.

And while I’m not the leader of our botulism project in the Lower Klamath, two of our six co-founders are. You can read all about their work caring for botulism-infected shorebirds and waterfowl during the last four years.

The immediate future and what comes next.

Our intention for the future is to continue what we’ve been doing, and to always seek improvement. Right now, this is easier said than done, but in fact it always is.

I dream of an internship program that can house and pay our interns, even if it’s only a small stipend. There is nothing that being able to afford working without compensation qualifies a person for, and many potentially gifted caregivers cuold be denied opportunity because they don’t have the resources to sustain working without pay. I’d like to change that and widen the reach we have by deepening the pool we draw from.

Right now, in California Black Bear cub and Mountain Lion kitten rehabilitation is done only by a few organizations, (if at all in the case of Mountain Lion kittens). Every Black Bear cub admitted from Humboldt, Trinity, Del Norte, Sikiyou, Shasta, or Mendocino Counties is sent to Sacramento and then to Lake Tahoe for rehabilitation, but often into permanent captivity. I would like to change this, and establish a legitmate bear cub rehabilitation program here so that the region’s bears can be treated and released at home. This is a long term goal, but one we never lose sight of …

A fully functional medical clinic, with the capacity to make radiographs and a veterinarian on staff are developments that we must pursue. Volunteer veterinarians, and long distance consulting with wildlife specific veterinarians gets the job done, but better is needed, even if for the benefit of our staff. I’ve had the privilege of working with some very gifted wildlife vets at the various places I’ve been on staff over the last 23 years and I want to ensure that the staff of HWCC has the same benefit.

Expanded service and an increase in our preventative programs are in the works, from education programs at all levels (schoolchildren, governing boards) to practical efforts like beach patrols, increased capacity for interventions in conflicts, and late night availability for emergency response. We know these are things we can build, given the time and materials.

In short, we must always expand our capacity and raise our standards. A capacity reduced, a standard lowered are poisonous. Our mission, our patients, our vocation all demand excellence. We strive to meet that demand.

I do wish we had more time to make this critical move. But that’s never been possible, and ensuing circumstances didn’t help, such as my health problems that took up a significant part of last year. All that we’ve built does feel jeopardized right now – and what we’ve built has signifcant value – losing it would be catastrophic – so we must preserve it, and we must do so in a way that allows us to continue to build on what we’ve accomplished.

That’s what makes this property in Manila a “rare opportunity.” Let me count the ways.

It exists. We’ve been looking for suitable property that we can envision purchasing, meaning, that we can even entertain the idea of raising the funds. Many incredible properties are available for those with the resources to buy them. This property in Manila is offered to us because we know the owner, who understands how we will use it, and has generously lowered the price.
Maybe we can afford it.
Location: like our current location in Bayside, Manila is well situated in Humboldt County to make it it accessible for the many communities North and South. Staying between Eureka and Arcata seems important. We routinely make trips to Crescent City and Garberville. Arcata Bay is a good spot for us.
Size: although I had dreamed of something larger, in truth we’ll be increasing the space we have available by at least four times. This will improve what we can set up for our patients. Yes, it may be the only option we have, but it’s also a good option to have.

The wild animals of Northern California and beyond need us to thrive, and to do so we must survive. If we fail to acquire this property we will have nowhere to go when our lease ends at the end of this year. Even acquiring that property tomorrow means we have only three months to get it ready for us to use it (certainly not to bring it to it’s full capacity, that may take a couple years) at the same time that we must dismantle our current facility and clear it from the land.

We need your help. Wildlife of our enormous and beautiful and necessary region in need, need you. Please help. Donate to our move and future.

Ringtail: Rescued, Raised, Released!

Posted on September 17, 2022September 17, 2022 by Monte Merrick

It was the middle of July when Humboldt Wildlife Care Center admitted a very young Ringtail (Bassariscus astutus) who’d fallen through a chimney into someone’s house in Hoopa. You may have read about her needs in care when her story was picked up by local news source, Redheaded Blackbelt.

While she would never be a very large animal, weighing about 1 kilogram (2.2lbs) as an adult, she was definitely going be much larger than this!

A Ringtail (other common names include Ring-tailed cat, MIner’s cat and even Civet cat) is not a cat, although they do have many cat-like qualities, from appearance to behaviors. In fact, Ringtails are members of the family Procyonidae, a group that includes coatimundis, kinkajous and the much more familiar Raccoon. Yet the comparisons to other animals are even built into their scientific name – the latin binomial Bassariscus astutus, literally means, sly little fox!

When this sly little raccoon cousin was admitted, her eyes were open and her teeth were just starting to come in. She was still quite young – maybe 8 weeks old. We immediately started her on a milk replacer. At only 140 grams, she would need at least two weeks, maybe three, before she could be weaned to an all solid food diet.

Samantha, a summer intern, prepares the RIngtail’s milk replacer.

Already grown a lot since admission, this is one of the last times she was ever tube-fed milk replacer.

By the end of July, the youngster was on a diet of egg, fruit, vegetables, insects, rodents and birds. In the middle of a hectic baby season most of our mammal housing was already in use by the usual suspects (raccoons, skunks, opossums), besides her needs for outdoor housing were far more arboreal than any of the mammals we routinely treat. So we built a small but usable housing, dubbed Ringtail Tower. WIth a lot of vertical space, she was able to develop her climbing skills while chasing crickets as she learned to hunt.

RIngtail Tower, now suffering from empty-nest syndrome.

After several more weeks, and a lot of crickets, rats, mice, eggs, blueberries and more, she was getting to be a good size, with good skills, for us to start planning her release.

Although she was born in Hoopa, she’d spent a large portion of her infancy and her first several weeks of being a juvenile in care in our facility on the edge of Humboldt Bay. The record-shattering heat that gripped most of California, including her home valley on the Trinity River, never touched us here in Humboldt. Although she was ready to be released, we decided to wait for the heatwave to break before taking her home.

At last, the second weekend of September, the temperature in Hoopa was down to reasonable 90 degrees with even cooler temperatures forecast for the coming week. We took the opportunity to release her during this window. With several days of normal heat, she’d be better acclimated if the thermometer started climbing into the danger zone again.

Here the Ringtail is in her outdoor housing in the middle of capture for her release evaluation.

The box was placed carefully to give her an easy launch into cover.

Thank goodness for long lenses and fantastically alert Procyonids! She definitely wants to keep us in sight as she makes her break.

A last backward glance before she slides into the prviacy of her wild freedom.

Caring for this young Redtail was an honor. To be able to provide care for all our patients is an honor. It’s a privilege to be this near to wildness everyday of our lives and we don’t take this privilege lightly. That our work is so rewarding is something for which I believe we are each grateful everyday. But our work is not only a privilege, it’s also necessary. This Ringtail needed us. All of our patients do. This necessity, and the sorrow of this necessity, is also with us daily. And this necessity is what makes our position so precarious. The only thing that can stabilize our future, and ensure that we are here, every day of every year to help wildlife in need, is your support. Please donate. Our patients need us, and we need you. Thank you. click to donate

all photos: Laura Corsiglia/bird ally x.

After a Long Swim, Great Egret Regains the Sky

Posted on September 4, 2022September 4, 2022 by Monte Merrick

White Heron by John Ciardi
What lifts the heron leaning on the air
I praise without a name. A crouch, a flare,
a long stroke through the cumulus of trees,
a shaped thought at the sky — then gone. O rare!
Saint Francis, being happiest on his knees,
would have cried Father! Cry anything you please

But praise. By any name or none. But praise
the white original burst that lights
the heron on his two soft kissing kites.
When saints praise heaven lit by doves and rays,
I sit by pond scums till the air recites
It’s heron back. And doubt all else. But praise.

The person who called was standing at the Eureka waterfront, near the Adorni Center, when she watched a Great Egret come swimming across the channel that separates the shoreline there from Woodley Island. The ordinarily elegant and beautiful white bird clambored out of the water up onto the riprap and hunkered down, apparently exhausted.

Catching the Egret wasn’t that hard. A bedraggled big white bird sitting on rocks is easy to spot, and their exhaustion left them unable to flee when approached. Once captured, it was obvious that this was a juvenile Egret, – this year’s model, who’d probably come into this world just two islands over on Tuluwat, which hosts a large heronry each Spring and Summer.

After getting them back to the clinic, we first provided a warm environment to help with hypothermia, and administered warmed fluids both to help warm the egret as well as to begin rehydrating the seriously depleted bird.

Within a few hours the bird was standing and very pleased to discover the fish that we’d put in their housing with them. For piscivores in trouble, fish is a big part of the solution.

For many patients, a small sample of blood can reveal a lot about their condition. Spinning the sample in a centrifuge separates the blood into cells and plasma, revealing the percentage that is red blood cells. This number is often called the “packed cell volume” or PCV. Red blood cells carry the oxygen that is part of the fuel of life – the lower the PCV, the more anemic the patient. While there is some variation across the many species we treat, for aquatic birds, a PCV of 40 (that is to say that red blood cells make up 40% of the total sample) is considered a baseline of good health. This Egret’s first sample on admission revealed a critically low PCV of 17%. Considering the severity of the bird’s dehydration, it’s safe to say that the actual percentage of red blood cells would be even lower one the patient is rehydrated.

Still, this number didn’t really change the care we offered (warmth, fluids, fish and safety), but it did let us know how close to death the young Egret had come.

After a few days, of hydration and food, the Egret’s PCV had climbed above 20 and they were able to make short evasive flights in the aviary when we would capture for regular exams and weight checks. After 8 days in care the PCV had recovered another 10 points and stood at 30%. After a couple weeks, the Egret was flying beautifully – their PCV was back within normal limits, their weight had increased from 679 grams in admission to 1117 grams – a 160% gain! They looked really good. It was time for release.

Clearly this Egret is thinking, “Outside the box!”

Watching an Egret fly from our care out over the mudflats of lowtide on Humboldt Bay is one of the greatest thrills.

A moment to pause and consider this restored freedom!

With a vigorous shake, the Egret dumps the last of humanity that’d been clinging to their feathers. A shiver and we are a memory.

The telephoto lens reveals where the Egret flew.

An adult Great Egret flies in to see what’s going on.

A meeting in Manila, “the gem of Arcata Bay“

And so we leave them to their private, wild freedom.

Even though many of our patients are injured traumatically, or have become so sick and debilitated that there isn’t anythng we can do to help, and even through the frustrations of living in a human society that casually hinders, harms and destroys wild lives, providing care for the wild, the innocent, provides a wonderful close view of the miracle of healing, the mystery of hunger, and the fulfillment of dreams. This Egret was an astonishing patient. Your support bought the fish, the fluids, the safe space, the net and the gasoline for the rescue, as well as paid for the trained and dedicated staff needed to deliver it all in an effective manner. Thank you for making sure this Great Egret had somewhere and someone who could help them with a second chance.

This is a crucial time in our history, and as we prepare to move our facility to a location that will give us something more stable and sustainable we need your help badly! If you can, please DONATE today

Thank you for making the difference all of our patients need.

all photos: Laura Corsiglia/BAX

Barn Owls displaced, first by hay, then by fire, fly free at last!

Posted on August 31, 2022August 31, 2022 by Monte Merrick

Six nestling Barn Owls (Tyto Alba) were admitted to Humboldt Wildlife Care Center mid-July, nestlings who’d been unintentional stowaways on a truckload of hay from Siskiyou county and delivered to Myrtletown.

We’ve posted a story about their care (check out A Half Dozen Barn Owls in a Truckload of Hay). This is the story of their release.

We’d been planning a trip deep into Siskiyou to return these owls to where they were from. In preparation the owls had each shown they could identify, capture and eat prey (a necessary step when rehabilitating orphaned hunters). They were each expert at flight, in excellent condition, and more than anything else, the aviary was clearly the biggest problem they had. It was time for freedom.

As anyone within five hours of Humboldt Bay probably knows, Siskiyou, Eastern Humboldt, and Trinity counties have been suffering from wild fires since early Summer. Unfortunately for these owls, the place on Earth where they came into the word is under a fire threat.

So we found a location that incorporated some of the characteristics of home, and hoped for the best, in a world that is becoming a patchwork, with all of us leaping from slippery rock to rock, trying to keep it going as we cross this torrent.

A Half-Dozen Barn Owls in a Truckload of Hay

Posted on August 15, 2022August 21, 2022 by Monte Merrick

It’s not the first time this has happened – a trailer-load of hay from Ashland or Yreka or somewhere else hours away from Humboldt Wildlife Care Center is delivered to a local ranch, only to discover nestling Barn Owls (Tyto alba) hidden with the bales. It’s happened a few times over the decade, in fact. So it wasn’t shocking when that call came in the middle of July – a load of hay just delivered in Eureka that had come down from Siskiyou County brought along the babies of a Barn Owl nest too. We admitted six nestlings that day, dehydrated, hungry and very unhappy.

As nestlings go, these six were pretty far along in their development. Three of them fledged within the first week of care and were moved to an outdoor aviary. Within two weeks, all six owls were flying. Each day each owl was getting at least one “medium” sized rat. (that’s a lot of rats – more on how we pay for it all later).

RIght now, we are helping them prepare for release by learning to hunt. The lessons tend to come pretty easily for them. You could say that they’re naturals. As soon as they demonstrate that they can support themselves, we know the time for their return the Wild is at hand.

Fledgling Barn Owl getting a routine examination while in care at HWCC.

Clinic staff administer fluid therapy on a dehydrated Barn owl nestling.

A young owl’s wing with new feathers that have not yet flown.

They sure fly now, and soon in total freedom.

These six Barn Owls are getting a second chance at wild freedom. They came so close to being among the many untallied victims of a human world that kills randomly and without recognition simply by operating as it was inended – We grow the hay, we store it, we ship it – none of it meant to harm owls, and none of it meant to prevent harm either. It’s in this world that we meet our mission. And we can only do it with your help. We’ve already spent over a thousand dollars on food for these beautiful and innocent wild lives. That’s only example of the real difference your support makes. Your support pays for the heating pads, the fluids, the aviary, the phone and the dedicated and skilled staff it takes to make the whole thing fly. Thank you!!

REMINDER! This is our last year at our curent location. YOur help is needed making this challenging move. Read more about it here and again, your support will help us a lot. It’s getting urgent!

Moving HWCC: Next Level Unlocked! Property Found!

Posted on July 19, 2022July 19, 2022 by Monte Merrick

Since we realized that we needed to relocate Humboldt Wildlife Care Center from its current location in Bayside to somewhere suitable and sustainable back in March of 2021, with less than two years to accomplish to the move, there has been a background of stress about our future that has added a layer of urgency to each day of operation – the clock is ticking!

After months of searching and considering multiple scenarios, at last, we’ve settled on a property that is available and accessible and meets most of the criteria we’d established. While the asking price is much more than we have, it’s also the most affordable we’ve been able to find. We’ve come to an agreement with the property owner for the lot, which, happily is nearly 6 times larger than our current leased quarter-acre. With this major step achieved, now we enter the next big challenge: secure the funds!

Sneak peek of future site of HWCC, once we secure the funding!

We don’t have much time now. We need to be on our new site and operating by the first of the new year, as well as have cleared our old site from our soon-to-be-former landlord’s land. This is a very tall order. We will not be successful without the help from our community, especially financially. Still, that we’ve even found a piece of property that we can use is very relieving – it hadn’t been looking too good for too many months!

The new location is in Manila, which has many advantages for our work. I think we will be well-placed to continue and expand our reach in our region. As the Crow flies, we’re just moving across the bay.

Another view of this future diamond in the current rough!

What a year it’s been! As the director of the Care Center, I don’t think we’ve faced a more challenging time – between my health problems (which thankfully are no problem at all now!), the ongoing pandemic, the record number of patients we’ve admitted over the last two years and the challenges of of this relocation, we are in a swirl of difficulties! Yet guiding us, as always, we have our mission – to serve our region’s wild neighbors in need, to serve the field of widlife rehabilitation with workshops, to educate new rehabilitators, and to help our communities develop the resources and perspectives needed to peacefully co-exist with the Wild, and end our society’s war on Nature. Our mission makes our challenges seem quite manageable indeed! And with your support, which has kept has going for over 40 years, Humboldt Wildlife Care Center will move into a new era of stability and growth.

If we had $500,000 dollars, we could purchase the property and fund the costs of rebuilding of our facility. That’s a lot to raise in such a short period. Realistically, we need to plan on having less resources available – we’ll need to creative and committed. Fortunately, we are well versed in accomplishing a lot with very little. I don’t know how we will do it, but I do know that we will.

Thank you for being here always. You’ve made quality care for our wild neighbors possible. If you’d like to support our work, our land purchase, or the costs of rebuilding, and invest in the continued care available for our wild neighbors, please DONATE! Every gift helps.

Want to help us help our wild neighbors in need?

Posted on June 10, 2022June 12, 2022 by Monte Merrick

You can help return an orphaned or injured wild animal to the wild! You can help keep wild families together! You can help keep our facility functional and clean! Volunteers are needed for all tasks. After putting our volunteer program on hold in March of 2020, we’ve been slowly rebuilding it, adding volunteers to our shifts as the pandemic has allowed, and now we are ready to add more.

Volunteers are a crucial element in the field of wildlife rehabilitation. All wildlife rehab facilitities operate on shoestring budgets and without the necessary help from volunteers, we’d never last. The pandemic has been brutal on staff and we are very happy to rebuild our core team of volunteers.

The life of a volunteer: One day you’re helping with an opossum, the next day a Bald Eagle.

Some of the tasks that volunteers help with:

1. Cleaning: First and foremost, from the newest, most inexperienced volunteer to the director of our facility, a major task for all of us is cleaning. Laundry, dishes, sweeping, mopping, sanitizing – these are mission critical in a hospital setting and your experience in your own life will serve here! If you’re new to this kind of maintenance, we can help you and you dont have to get a job in the food service industry to learn it (as many of us did, like me!). We also have to clean the patient housing, which means that you will be trained in how to work around a frightened wild animal, without making the stress much worse.

2. Feeding: Patient food must be prepared at least twice a day. Want to learn what it takes to emulate a diet that a wild diet in the setting of temporary captive care? It’s a great skill to have and it won’t be long before you’lll understand the intricacies, and the principles that support them, of feeding a wild animal a nutritional diet that is familiar and therefore stress reductive.

3. Examinations: Helping staff perform routine examinations of our patients. In order to perform an assessment of the condition of our patients, routine exams are given. Volunteers learn valuable handling skills that protect the caregiver and the patient from harm. Instructions, safety protocols, and personal protective equipment are provided as needed.

4. Transportation: If you can drive from Oregon to Laytonville and sometimes beyond, then you can help us with transportation for patients. The region we serve is huge and we have to travel as many 3 hours away to pick up orphaned and injured wild neighbors. Simply driving all day can be a very big help to an animal who desperately needs a second chance.

5. Rescue: Many times people report an animal in trouble, but they are unable to do anything about it. They call us. We go out on missions to rescue wild animals every day. Even as a new volunteer you can still participate simply by driving. Capturing wild animals in need is a skill, but you will be provided with the training and the safety equipment to be a hero!

6. Releases: Returning an animal to their birthright of wild freedom is a joy beyond compare. Transporting animals to their release site and helping to ensure their safe return to the life that they were born to is one of the regular bits of supreme awesome-osity that can be yours simply by being here helping!

7. Answering the phone: Helping people resolve conflicts with wild animals is an important part of our daily work. Keeping wild families together – in other words preventing wild babies from becoming orphans is a serious task, can be difficult, and largely happens on the phone in conversation with someone who may be at their wit’s end. Learn to advocate for wild animals in an effective manner by answering the phone in our clinic. It can be challenging, but that just makes our successes sweeter!

8. Humane Solutions! Sometimes keeping wild families together requires an intervention. In order to stop a trapper or some other cruel plan to get rid of an unwated wild animal, we go to the scene and work with the people to keep the wild family safe while conving them that it would be ebst if they moved on. This is delicate work that can also take us on an adventure through people’s crawlspaces and attics. Not for everyone, but if it’s for you, you’ll learn valuable skills in humanely solving people’s conflicts with a wild animal.

9. Ambassador: You can be a voice for the rights of Mother Earth and the Wild. Education and outreach are very important parts of our mission. Do you enjoy speaking in public? Do you have a passion for environmental education? Do you want to make people act right toward wildlife? We may be the droids you’re looking for!

Releasing an animal who was going to die without our care is one the greatest joys known to humanity.

These are some of the most common and important ways that we rely on volunteers to meet the challenges of our mission. Just about every wildlife rehabilitator working today began as a volunteer, and many still are volunteers. Many wildlife rehabilitators with their own facilities at their own houses are still volunteers! This is not a well-paid field, unless you factor in the job satisfaction, and in that sense, it’s unparalleled.

But satisfaction isn’t all that you’ll get out of helping us help our wild neighbors. You will get critical training that can be used here or in a larger context. As a member of the Oiled Wildlife Care Network HWCC/bax is your local path toward being qualified to help care for impacted wildlife if there is ever a catastrophic oil spill locally or across the state. Believe me, the only way to make these kinds of disasters less painful is being able to help repair and restore what was broken. Your desire to help begins here!

So if you want to help us help wildlife in a direct hands-on manner, let us know! CLICK HERE TO APPLY

And if your dance card or your plate is already full, you can always help us meet our mission with your generous support. Donations make our world go ’round. Without your financial help, our doors would close forever. PLEASE DONATE HERE

Thank you for your love of the Wild. Love is the most important ingredient in the conservation and protection of our natural home and our wild kin!

New Wild Review vol 3 ep 1 “Save a logger, shoot an owl”

Posted on May 26, 2022May 26, 2022 by Monte Merrick

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:42 — 56.9MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | RSS

Our latest podcast, in which we discuss treating individuals of a controversial species.

Mid-summer at HWCC; the Pandemic Year. part one.

Posted on July 19, 2020July 19, 2020 by Monte Merrick

It’s a chaotic time in the world and in America especially, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic striking right when public leadership at the highest level in this country is at odds with public health. Every single day Humboldt Wildife Care Center/bird ally x opens our doors to the needs of our wild neighbors and no matter how frightening the times, our dedicated staff show up and get the job done. This is the first in a series of quick posts to catch up the news of our mission.

Here we are, past mid-July, and our pandemic year is only intensifying. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to take the time to write about our work. We rarely have time for more than a brief social media post to keep our supporters aware of how things are going. Our volunteer program remains in hiatus – to protect them, but also to protect our clinic and our mission. Our small wildlife hospital on Humboldt Bay is the only thing of its kind across three counties and we must stay covid-free. Most days we are grossly understaffed. On top of that our caseload is greater than ever – we’ve already provided care for nearly 900 wild neighbors this year to date! Since its founding in 1979, HWCC has not treated so many patients in one 6 and a half month period. In 2013 we treated just over 900 animals for the whole year!

Through our humane solutions program, we’ve helped keep dozens of wild families together, preventing senseless deaths of mother raccoons and skunks, and protecting their babies from becoming orphans. Still, even with these efforts, we currently have more than 75 orphaned wild babies in care.

Right now we are caring for 11 Black-tailed Deer fawns, 14 baby Raccoons, a dozen Striped Skunk babies. Two days we ago released four young American Robins we’d cared for since they were nestlings. We’ve treated Western Gray Squirrels, Deer mice, Opossums, various species of Swallows. Today or tomorrow we’ll be releasing 2 young Great Blue Herons whose nest was destroyed in the windstorm of mid-May. Now they are fully grown and able to hunt for their own fish. We’ll be taking them back to the Trinity River.

For the last two months, four young Gray foxes have been growing up in our care. The stage where we provide them live crickets to begin their lessons in providing their own meals has begun. The joy of helping these young intelligent predators reach their true destiny is indescribable. Pictures help!

Four Gray fox kits warily watch their caregiver as she prepares to capture them for their weekly examination. Keeping these wild predators wild is critical to their successful release!

Currently we also have 3 baby Common Murres in care, and several more brought to us as they were dying. Sad as this is, it might be a good sign for the local population of Common Murres, as the last few years their breeding colonies had largely failed, and this might mean that there are more babies making it to sea this year.

Not only our increased workload with decreased staffing has cost us, though; a huge stress has been the funding. As the pandemic has hit our human economy hard, it has taken a toll on the resources available for our wild neighbors, wild neighbors who are in our care because of what the human built world has done to them. It’s been hard to ask for financial support during a time of such economic stress, but we aren’t going to be run on magic forever. We do have a real electric bill, water bill, rent bill, fish bill, staff wages and more to pay. Right now we need your help. It’s critical.

To all who’ve been supporting us through this, thank you. Your contributions are more than material. You lift our spirits too.

Please contribute if you can. Every little bit helps.

Thank you for helping keep our doors open!

DONATE HERE

It Was Ten Years Ago Today!

Posted on September 22, 2019September 22, 2019 by Monte Merrick

September 22 2009 several friends sat down at the end of the workday at a seabird hospital to work on an outline for a workshop we’d be presenting at a wildlife rehabilitation conference the following Spring: An Introduction to Aquatic Bird Rehabilitation. At the end of our meeting, we stuck around to talk about a crazy idea – an idea hatched on the shores of Lummi Island Washington and fledged at the edge of the Suisun Marsh, home to 10 percent of the remaining wetlands of California.

The idea was for a collective of wildlife caregivers, who could help other caregivers deal with difficult times and cases, both through directly aiding them, as well as producing reference material, a library of helpful advice.

Dr Shannon Riggs, BAX co-founder visits Humboldt Wildlife Care Center. Staff and interns look forward to Shannon’s visits eagerly. She is an excellent teacher and our time with her is too rare!

To me, the idea was slightly embarrassing to propose since it sounded almost cartoon-ish – wildlife rehabilitators’ Super Friends – and the fact that our proposed name didn’t help alleviate that impression also had caused some reticence. But as is so often the case, a foolhardy courage prevailed and Bird Ally X was soon in flight.

Besides the workshop, which we’ve since presented many times across California and the USA, our primary mission was to share the skills and tools necessary to provide effective and ethical aquatic wild bird care. Later we would amend our mission to include all wild animals.

BAX co-founders, from right, January Bill, Laura Corsiglia, Marie Travers, on site at the Lower Klamath Basin refuge, 2018.

The six of us who produced the original workshop, Shannon Riggs, DVM, January Bill, Marie Travers, Vann Masvidal, Laura Corsiglia, and myself, met as colleagues in oiled wildlife response. In fact we first worked together as a whole on the November 2007 oil spill in San Francisco Bay caused when the Cosco Busan collided with the Bay Bridge in heavy fog, leaking well over 50,000 gallons of bunker fuel into the water. Approximately 1500 aquatic birds were rescued and brought into care by the Oiled Wildlife Care Network, and treated at the San Francisco Bay Oiled Wildlife Care and Education Center, in Fairfield.

Previous to this event each of us had extensive wildlife rehabilitation experience, on other oil spills and at other facilities, working with a variety of species, from songbirds to raccoons, from cougars to hawks. Most of us had worked in less privileged circumstances than we did as oil spill responders due to the lack resources available to the average wildlife rehabilitation facility. Working in oil response provided us the opportunity to develop skills, techniques, and protocols when working with large numbers of aquatic birds that we knew most wildlife rehabilitators simply couldn’t access.

BAX co-founder Vann Masvidal conducts a workshop on wound management at an annual wildlife rehabilitation conference.

Treating 1500 birds at one time will sharpen your skills quite quickly; repeatedly working in such an environment over the course of years will make you a leader in the field. All of us felt a need to share those skills and de-centralize them. There is far more coast, far more interior land, than the few specialized wildlife hospitals for aquatic birds could ever cover. To ensure that aquatic birds have quality care available when in need requires that we spread the benefits of our own experience and training.

While working at the Oiled Wildlife Care Network in the Bay Area, we routinely received sick and injured aquatic birds from as far away as Humboldt County, which did not yet have the facility or available skilled staff to provide care for aquatic birds. At the San Francisco facility we even once helped 140 seabirds caught in a harmful algal bloom off the coast of Astoria, Oregon. Clearly it would be better for the animals in need, if care was closer than 300-500 miles away.

The first Bird Ally X publication, An Introduction to Aquatic Bird Rehabilitation, began as a handout for our workshop participants in 2010. By 2012, our little “handout” had become a 152 page textbook. *An Introduction to Aquatic Bird Rehabilitation* is now in its second edition with over 1500 copies sold.

An aquatic bird care workshop that we could deliver at conferences and on-site at various facilities was our first step toward meeting our mission, complemented by our first publication, An Introduction to Aquatic Bird Care.

In August 2011, we met our first major challenge when we learned that juvenile Brown Pelicans were suffering from contamination by oily fish waste around Humboldt and Del Norte counties. We partnered with Humboldt Wildlife Care Center (HWCC) in Bayside to have a facility to provide care for approximately 50 young Brown pelicans. Over the next few years, we managed the rehabilitation program at HWCC, building its capacity to provide care for more of the wild animals who make their living and home on the North Coast.

HWCC/bax Assistant Rehab Manager Lucinda Adamson doesn’t mind a little rain when resotring a patient’s wild freedom.

Wildlife care intern Nora Chatmon (left) prepares to tube-feed a starving Common Murre (*Uria Aalge*) desperate for calories, while staff rehabilitator Stephanie Owens holds the patient.

In 2014, seeing the opportunity to have an excellent facility that also doubles as a working lab for developing protocols and training future wildlife care providers, BAX took complete responsibility for HWCC, now HWCC/bax. To date nearly 60 interns, predominantly life science students at the nearby Humboldt State University, have passed through our program, with many going on to successful careers in wildlife rehabilitation and other wildlife related work.

As our co-founders no longer work together each day in the same facility, we meet up as often as time permits. Laura and I are here in Humboldt, where I’m the director of HWCC, and Laura continues her role as publications coordinator and art director. January Bill is now in Klamath Falls, Oregon, which puts her in a perfect position to bring excellent protocols and practices to the chronic avian botulism problem on the Lower Klamath Basin Refuge, rescuing and rehabilitating over 700 water birds in the last two years. Marie Travers works closely with January on the avian botulism problem and on their joint work focusing on patient stress in wildlife care. Marie continues her work as an oil spill responder as well.

HWCC/bax Volunteer Coordinator Ruth Mock speaks for the Opossums.

Shannon Riggs and Vann Masvidal each work with Pacific Wildlife Care in Morro Bay, where they treat thousands of animals each year, many of them seabirds, and they continue to be the backbone of our board of directors.

At Humboldt Wildlife Care Center we’ve added excellent people to our crew. Lucinda Adamson, who was an intern during our second fish waste Pelican crisis in 2012 is now the Assistant Wildlife Rehabilitation Manager. Stephanie Owens, who began as a volunteer in 2014 is now a staff rehabilitator. Ruth Mock is volunteer coordinator.

Recent additions to our permanent gang, who recently completed internships, Brooke Brown who works with our humane solutions program for co-existing with our wild neighbors, and Desiree Vang, another recently graduated intern who is helping us with our membership data and other administrative tasks. Both continue to work in animal care in the clinic as well.

Lucinda Adamson and recent intern graduate Desiree Vang perform an admission exam on an American Crow (*Corvus brachyrhynchos*).

Happy Recent internship graduate, Brooke Brown in the moment of joy immediately after seeing a healthy patient fly away.

Bird Ally X has a mission that will never be completed, because there will always be more to discover and more to teach. Moreover, it seems obvious that centralized solutions to global problems are a luxury that we won’t be able to afford much longer. Sooner more likely than later, our safety nets will be tested and it’s safe to assume that the well-being of individual wild animals will be ‘de-prioritized’ at the institutional level. But we know that it will be a concern to individual humans that individual animals receive proper treatment when in need.

As its ultimate mission, BAX must help ensure that those people, however burdened, however underfunded, however remote, have access to the best possible techniques to provide care for as many species as they can. Based on today’s degraded environment, we imagine the potential of ecological catastrophe and the damaging impact our foundering industrial society might have on our wild neighbors and we prepare to meet the needs of those who will provide their care.

When the Oiled Wildlife Care Network holds a training in region 1, nearly all participants are BAX staff, interns and volunteers!

Tabytha Sheeley, an HWCC/bax intern now employed at Pacific Wildlife Care in Morro Bay.

Whether it’s the hundreds of ducks on the Lower Klamath or the 1200+ wild animals we treat in Humboldt each year, not only are we there for those innocent lives, but we are there are also for the knowledge we can gain to be passed on to our colleagues and future colleagues; – that can be shared with our fellow lovers of the wild – that can be taught to children about the sentience and self-ownership of all that is wild and free – about our own wild freedom that pulses with every beat of our hearts.

Ten years is a long time, yet it is barely a beginning! We’ve met many challenges to get where we are, but we have so many more to overcome. Your support has made our accomplishments (and survival!) possible. With your continued support we will meet our continuing goals, such as fully realizing HWCC/bax as a teaching wildlife hospital, and helping to bring a greater level of compassion to bear on our wild neighbors, and thereby reduce the need for our services.

It’s a dream. It’s a dream you can help make real. Please donate today and let’s help make certain that the next ten years brings us closer to our goal.

PLEASE DONATE TODAY!